About Blake Phillips

Posts by Blake Phillips:

In the early stages of AP evolution, much attention is spent learning new things. Many APs are eager to be taught “secret” plays and techniques, and to needlessly complicate plays that they haven’t yet mastered. How many forum posts have you read from novice card counters wondering if they should “upgrade” to a level-two counting system or complex side counts?

This is natural at the early stages, but as you accumulate skill and experience, you’ll find that there’s much more value in recognizing your own strengths and weaknesses, and tailoring your approach to them.

Of course, this gives you the opportunity to improve. If you can count down a six-deck shoe in a minute-twenty but you can’t recall the correct index for A8 vs. 4, then you know what you need to work on.

More importantly, knowing and being honest about your weaknesses helps to keep you from getting into marginal spots that can prove to be very costly. You’ve heard the expression that someone knows just enough about something to get into trouble. This applies extra to APs!

No matter how strong you think your game is, mistakes can prove to be a massive problem. An overestimation of your own skills will produce mistakes, which typically both lower your edge and increase your variance—two things we work very hard to avoid in most cases.

A lot of this comes down to ego. I see it especially in cases involving team play, where one player wants to impress the other with their apparent skill, but it’s also common amongst ambitious solo players, many of whom seem to be perpetually “below EV.”

If you think you have something to prove to yourself or to others, I’d suggest re-evaluating your objectives. The most impressive APs, in my opinion, are the ones who have gone in and got the money, over and over again, no matter how simple the means. They don’t need to put on a show because that’s not what they’re in business to do.

It’s neat hearing about unusual, niche plays that are completely outside the box, but these don’t always correlate with long-term success. In fact, some of the more obscure plays I’ve learned about came courtesy of players who also have a tendency to get in over their heads, playing under conditions that even more skilled players would pass on, and perpetually overbetting in high-variance, low-edge situations.

These guys fancy themselves to be really high-end APs: always on top of new plays, and always mixed up in stuff that seems brilliant on the surface. But their determination to outdo themselves is dangerous, and their willingness to gamble in marginal spots can be a liability if they work as part of a team.

If you know your weaknesses and are honest with yourself, you can avoid these kind of problems. But there’s another side to the coin, and that’s playing to your strengths.

It’s tempting to get wrapped up in new, sexy plays, but if you’re really good at a particular play, don’t be afraid to specialize for a bit. Avoiding becoming a one-trick pony is a good idea, but getting involved in a series of plays less valuable than the one you specialize in just because you feel compelled to diversify is generally not good policy.

Having bread-and-butter plays that you devote the majority of your time to will make things a lot easier. You can always work on new stuff, too, but you may find it more reasonable to spend 20% of your time on it, instead of 50%. Don’t give up too much value just because you’re afraid of specializing.

Prioritize the stuff you’re good at, and work on your weaknesses in your downtime, not at the tables. The money will be steadier, the work less stressful, and the end result a more solid AP foundation. As in many other ventures in life, checking your ego at the door will pay off in the long run.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

Quick: you have an option to play a game with a 20% edge or one with a 2% edge? Which do you choose?

Naturally, the answer is the default AP-related one: it depends. In this case, factors may include table maximum and variance, but one factor that gets overlooked all too often is game speed.

With nearly any form of advantage play, game speed is an incredibly important variable. When you have an edge, you want as many repeated trials as possible; when you are playing against a house edge, you want as few trials as possible. More rounds per session also means a shorter time needed to get into the “long run.” Many APs understand this, but few put the effort into making this information as useful as possible, resulting in diminished EV, even if the overall edge and result is still positive.

It doesn’t matter if you’re counting cards, playing hole cards, grinding on a video poker machine, or playing a generous promotion—the faster you play, the more rounds you get in, the more your win rate increases, the faster you get to the “long run,” and the more you skew the ratio of getting the work in to time being observed by interested casino personnel.

The inverse is a situation where you are playing against a house edge—comp hustling or playing for cover, for example—and you want to give up the least amount of EV possible. You’ll need to be a little creative to make this happen without being completely obvious. This also applies to you, hole card players who leave the table the second a relief dealer shows up (or drop to 10% of your normal bet, as if no one can tell the difference).

There are myriad reasons why one would want to manipulate game speed, so instead, I’m going to focus on some ideas to actually do it. As I said before, get creative!

Speed it up:

Whenever feasible, play heads-up, or displace civilians at a table with skilled players, even if their only purpose is to play fast.

Keep conversation to a minimum. If you’re counting, you may want to keep this consistent during shuffles, too; talking only during shuffles can make your gameplay look even more methodical and focused.

Manage buy-ins efficiently. Limit the number of times you need to buy-in or color up. Monitor the chips in the tray to know when a particular denomination is running low and strategically time your color-ups. Most casinos can change 25 bills without having to break the process into multiple steps—buying in for $3k typically takes more time than $2.5k.

If you order drinks, have your money ready to hand to the server before they arrive.

In select cases, consider giving up extra EV on unimportant hands in order to boost game speed on others. In one recent session, my partner played significantly sub-optimally in order to speed up gameplay, as the edge on my spot was tremendous and easily made up for any EV lost on his spot.

This one goes without saying, but practice! Even one additional hand per hour adds up over the course of a year, and the EV gained can be significant.

Slow it down:

Play at full tables, especially ones with a party vibe. The more time spent joking around and high-fiving, the less time spent playing.

Engage both dealers and players in conversation. Either party may get annoyed if you’re wrapped up in conversation with the other; if they’re all talking, it’ll go much more smoothly.

Manage buy-ins inefficiently! Buy in for small amounts, frequently. Color up or break down chips. Use a mixture of bill denominations in your transactions, preferably flipped in different directions. Have a partner come in and buy in for $100 in singles. My apologies to the dealers.

Order drinks, but never have your cash ready, and be very indecisive when ordering. What kind of beer does the bar stock? Are those bottles, or draft? Always tip your server, but feel free to chuck in an extra dollar if you’ve been especially difficult. This won’t slow the game any more, but it’s the nice thing to do.

Request a comp, if you’re playing rated. You may need a recommendation on where to eat. The dealer can always deal you out while you discuss this with the boss.

None of these are especially groundbreaking, but they should give you a starting point on game speed manipulation. The important thing is to be aware of just how significant game speed is relative to your results. You can still have a nice edge without putting much effort into this, but you’ll absolutely be leaving money on the table. Over the course of weeks, months, years, and careers, this money can add up to huge sums! Start thinking about game speed now and you’ll be happy you did later.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

We often sneer at casino ineptitude, eager to point out amongst ourselves instances in which casinos took excessive, misdirected, or just plain absurd actions as a response to suspected advantage play. Sometimes it’s a way to add some levity to a sometimes grueling and frequently stressful occupation, and sometimes it’s legitimate outrage at abusive casino behavior (e.g., aggressive and physical barrings, backroomings, etc.).

As Lee pointed out in “Milk or Toast?”, casino ineptitude is not always a bad thing. In one example, he mentions a pit boss pretending to count down a deck on a game where card counting is not occurring, giving Lee an effective green light to continue playing. We poke fun at scenarios like this, but of course, this is far preferable to a sharp pit boss who can nail esoteric plays with accuracy and efficiency.

So, we generally don’t celebrate casino enlightenment, but as with all things AP, there are exceptions. Sometimes casinos do it right, and even we can give them credit for that. We can also use “correct” casino behaviors as a useful barometer to make more accurate assessments of a particular play.

A simple example involves procedural errors. In the old days, dealers making consistent yet correctable procedural errors that were subsequently exploited by advantage players resulted in dealers being fired, often for being “unlucky.” While there are still some examples of such ridiculous behavior, most casinos now go the route of identifying and fixing the leak, rather than place the blame on superstition like the unluckiness of a particular dealer.

A while back, I played frequently in a casino that believed that certain dealers were unlucky. I didn’t always play with the “unlucky” dealers, but I knew that such unenlightened attitude on a management level was effectively a free pass to go wild. Turns out the whole casino was “unlucky.”

Then there was a casino that had some rookie dealers who were making frequent, profitable mistakes. A casual observer wouldn’t easily pick up on these, but the mistakes were there, nonetheless. I didn’t play long before a pit boss came over, calmly explained the nature of the mistakes to this particular dealer, and went back to the conversation she was having on the other side of the pit.

In this case, I’ve got to give these folks some respect. Not only did this boss quickly and accurately pick off a subtle procedural quirk, but she did so without pulling her her out and having panicked conversations with surveillance while a group of security staff fumbled around nearby. They just fixed the problem. Message received; they won’t see me again any time soon.

Finally, there’s the case of backoffs and barrings. While most casinos now recognize that the best way to bar APs is to politely ask them to leave and not come back, some still do things like forcibly backroom players, get physical during the barring process, verbally abuse players, and so on. Not only are these places setting themselves up for an expensive and completely avoidable lawsuit, they’re also showing their hand.

I give much more respect to casinos that handle game protection calmly and efficiently than I do to places that curse at players, have security that shove them around, and that think that handcuffing players for using their brains at the table is a reasonable countermeasure. Casinos in the latter category are all but guaranteed to be punished by APs.

Often, clueless casinos can are our bread and butter. They provide us with both profit and laughs at their expense. But it’s also important to recognize and respect instances of casinos doing things right, whether it ultimately leads us to avoid a place entirely, adjust our approach, or simply be able to play with the knowledge that we probably won’t get beat up when the hammer comes down. That’s good for business, both for us and for them.

If you were going into business in the traditional sense, you would hopefully research your target demographic and see what they’re buying, so to speak. In order to reach your potential customers most effectively, you have to give them what they want, in a way that ideally isn’t too different than what they’re accustomed to.

As an advantage player, your customers are casinos. You’re selling them a false narrative (that you’re a legitimate gambler), and you can most effectively do this by presenting this narrative in a way that they recognize and are comfortable with.

A couple of months ago, I took a look at a few of the common AP tells (“Don’t Look Like an AP“), in an effort to shine a light on some of the ways that APs give themselves away to the astute observer. Now, let’s take a more active approach and intentionally adopt the mannerisms and behaviors of the gamblers you’re trying to blend in with.

The first thing to take into consideration is that gamblers aren’t the same in all parts of the world, or across different levels of play. A high-stakes gambler in Macau is usually going to appear very unlike a high-stakes gambler in Atlantic City. The average red-chipper in a tourist town like Vegas would probably look a little out of place in the middle of Iowa.

When doing your market research, spend some time observing gamblers playing similar stakes to you in the region you’re playing in. How do they dress? How do they interact with the dealers, pit crew, and cocktail staff? How do they carry themselves at the table, and what is their interaction with other gamblers like? What are their betting tendencies? Look at hands, body language, and facial expressions. Listen in on some conversations.

I once played at an unfamiliar casino in a somewhat rural locale. Since I planned to play on the main floor, I took a stroll around the tables and noticed that a big chunk of the players were drinking a specific type of beer that was served in a fairly unusual way (sorry, you’ll have to use your imagination). I also took note of how many people wore baseball hats, whether or not people wore jackets or coats in the casino (it was warm outside but cold inside), and how the players interacted with the dealers and each other. When I came back to play, I like to think that I blended in reasonably well.

Another time, I played in a casino where I anticipated some high-stakes action. There were plenty of high rollers to observe, so I spent some time in the high limit room to get a sense of the high-stakes vibe at this particular property. I found that the big players here tended to dress extremely casually, blending in with the lower-stakes gamblers on the main floor. If I didn’t know any better, I might have showed up with a more upscale look, but instead, I kept it casual and fit right in.

Spend a little time doing your homework before you play, and you can avoid being the green-chipper in an off-strip local’s joint wearing a suit and setting off alarms before you even sit down to play. Instead, you’ll sell the casino exactly what they’re in the market for. And that’s just plain good business.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

For purely selfish reasons, I’ve done as folks like us do, and I’ve made an EV evaluation of contributing to this site.

On one hand, the tips and tricks contained herein would undoubtedly smooth the learning curve for the up-and-comer, allowing newer APs to learn from our mistakes and soak up some of the finer points that have been learned through years of actual casino experience.

On the other hand, one could argue that this blog gives away “trade secrets,” or that it offers more value to lurking casino employees hoping to understand how APs operate than it does to the AP community, and even if the inverse is true, the fact remains that there is a finite amount of money to go around in most forms of AP, and the more successful APs that exist, the less money each one of them can expect to take home personally.

Lose-lose, right?

While I can’t speak for Lee—the creator of AP Street—directly, I know there’s a touch of altruism motivating his creation of the site. We’ve both leaned a lot from the players who have come before us, and there’s a certain sense of duty in doing the same for the next generation of APs.

But on a pragmatic level, it all comes down to whether or not spreading information and sharing insights that aren’t widely published elsewhere is +EV or not.

In the original version of this piece (I re-wrote a big chunk, for reasons that are probably obvious), I took a look at a particular game that was once a goldmine for APs but is now old hat to casino folks and beginner players alike. While this game still provides the occasional opportunity to observant APs, it’s often a poor proposition from an exposure standpoint. Simply put: casinos got wise.

What took this opportunity from goldmine to waste of time? Was it ever-increasing casino awareness? Sure, to some extent. Was it a major increase in the volume of players exploiting this particular opportunity? Yes, absolutely. But, in my opinion, the number one game killer was sloppiness on the part of players.

Poorly-prepared APs are high-exposure. They heat themselves up through sloppiness and a lack of self-awareness, and they heat up the games that they’re spotted on. Even if a casino doesn’t know a play, they’ll be able to pick off a shoddy AP, and now all eyes are on the game that more skilled players may have been quietly profiting from for years.

I’ll give some of these guys the benefit of the doubt. Some players come up on their own, and they don’t have anyone to help them smooth out their rough edges. They may have absolutely no idea that their play is riddled with red flags.

Writing about stuff that most APs avoid talking about openly is a tough call, but if it helps stop casino-smartening behaviors before they start, then it’s almost certainly a good thing. Weak APs being weeded out as a form of natural selection may seem good for the bottom line, but if those APs wise up an entire casino to a particular sensitivity in the process, then there’s more potential money disappearing than they were going to take in the first place.

So, part of my motivation is giving back to the community that’s given freely to me. But I won’t pretend that there’s nothing in it for me, either. Better APs, longer-lasting opportunities. I may be idealistic, but I can think of a few opportunities that have dried up that might still be around if the people responsible for drying them up had read some of the tips on this site beforehand. That’s why this stuff is important, and that’s what’s in it for me.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

To many advantage players, mispays are an important part of their bottom line. Even to a blackjack player employing basic strategy, a single paid hand that should have lost represents a small advantage over the house for a full hour of play.

To an AP who already has an edge over the house, mispays go a long way to make up for occasional playing mistakes, EV overestimation, and a variety of other issues that benefit from the mitigating factor of an extra chip here and there.

The ethics of handling a mispay are simple, in my view. It’s the casino’s job to ensure that their payouts are accurate, not yours. The casino will frequently make mistakes not in your favor, and it’s your responsibility to catch these mistakes. I was recently underpaid $1000 at a cashier cage—who do you think caught the error?

If you hit on a hard 19 and bust, the pit boss isn’t going to come over and let you rethink your decision. If you accidentally fold a paying hand and only realize it after the fact, that money is as good as gone. There’s no hand-wringing required: correct errors favoring the casino, and use your judgment when it comes to mispays in your favor.

Why not simply accept all mispays in your favor? The answer is mostly strategic.

I’ve returned mispays many times in a scenario where I’m playing with a partner who is betting significantly more money than I am. The potential scrutiny and small gain of accepting a mispay on my relatively small wager presents a very poor risk-reward scenario, especially if it means that my table is now under active surveillance, even if it is ostensibly just to prevent further mispays.

I’ve also returned mispays in situations where I’m fairly certain that my table is already under active surveillance. I’ve received very large mispays that had what I considered a very low chance of going unnoticed, during sessions that were almost certainly under active review. Returning these mispays arguably bought me some expensive brownie points; I may have assuaged at least some suspicion as a result.

I’ve also returned mispays for reasons that are not at all strategic. Perhaps I’m less ruthless than most APs, but I’ve played with dealers that are just plain having a rough day, and a mispay or two could get them some real heat away from the table. I’m going to get the money one way or another—sometimes I’ll let a little of it go back just to make a fellow human’s life easier. No apologies.

By the way, if you collect a mispay and a pit boss arrives a few minutes later to ask for it back, it’s usually wise to do so, without complaint. First, this tells you that your table is being watched—the delay in catching it usually indicates that surveillance saw it and made the call—and secondly, you have little leverage in this situation. Just give it back with a smile.

This is all well-worn territory, but there’s another side to the mispay coin that must be considered. There are cases where a dealer has made fairly egregious error, either in your favor or otherwise, that will likely jeopardize the longevity of a particular dealer-specific play.

For example, I once got a little greedy while playing a rookie dealer and accepted two separate mispays on a single hand before pointing out that she hadn’t paid my additional, winning side bet before sweeping my cards. This required pit approval, which resulted in a call to surveillance, which resulted in my side bet getting paid but my other mispays being corrected (for a small net loss over just keeping the original mispay and keeping my mouth shut).

In this case, the rookie dealer was repositioned to a different game after her next break, and my shift abruptly ended. Calling out the error cause me to lose money straight away, but it caused me to lose much more money when the dealer was pulled from her table to prevent further mistakes.

Correct casino errors that hurt you, and when errors are made in your favor, think of the potential outcomes before accepting them. Most of the time, you’ll sweep up your extra chip(s) and move onto the next hand; other times, it may pay to smile, point out the error in your favor, and keep your eyes on the prize.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

Some of the best APs are ones that are hyper-aware of their surroundings. Veteran players can sense a backoff or barring long before the major signs appear; they also frequently play through situations that other players would identify as dangerous heat.

Some of this improved judgment comes only with experience, but a lot of it can be learned relatively quickly. One of my favorite tools for refining judgment at the tables is good old fashioned eavesdropping.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where I was sure the axe was about to drop, only for a partner to inform me that there was no heat at all. They’d been listening in on a conversation in the pit, and the heat was directed somewhere else entirely. Or, there actually was a lot of attention on me, but for reasons that weren’t at all worth worrying about.

Often, a money player on an attention-heavy game will take a bathroom break, at which point the pit and dealer will start openly gossiping about them! What may have originally felt like dangerous heat often turns out to just be the pit’s surprise at a player being so foolish with their money.

In one case, a partner of mine was receiving intense scrutiny on a game, so he decided to take a break to evaluate the safety of continuing play. Our table had a hovering pit boss, endless phone calls, visitors from other pits—the works.

While he was gone, the pit boss came over to chat with the dealer, specifically about this player’s conspicuous buy-ins. I had suspected that much of his heat was due to buying in heavy on a players card with little recorded play; a big chunk of his buy-in was in chips, which can look suspicious if a card doesn’t have a lot of recent play on it. The pit boss’s questions confirmed my suspicion.

After the boss walked away to answer another phone call, I mentioned to the dealer that I’d seen this player over at a craps table earlier. When the boss returned, the dealer told her that my partner had been playing craps earlier, which explained the chips. The boss was visibly relieved, and the phone calls and visitors subsided very shortly after.

In this case, my partner had already left the casino, assuming that his heat was too much to play through. It turned out that it was just buy-in heat that required a little suggestion to cool down. There was still money to be made, but we may not have known it if I hadn’t been listening closely.

Sometimes, you can figure out what the pit knows and what they don’t know, simply because they’ll tell you so.

If you’re betting big and making strange plays, then you’ll frequently get a lot of attention. If this attention is of the this guy is going to lose his ass variety, then you probably have nothing to worry about. If it’s something more along the lines of this guy is making some strange plays that seem to win more often than they should, and I want to know why, then you may need to make some adjustments.

Knowing the difference is often impossible by visual cues alone, but a listener at the table will frequently be able to sort it out in the absence of the player in question. Knowing why a pit is concerned tells you a lot about their sophistication with regard to various plays, and that can translate to lots of extra EV—if you’re paying attention.

Another valuable application for eavesdropping occurs when serious heat has occurred, and an estimation of the damages is useful in determining whether or not a casino or dealer can be played in the future.

I’ve had partners tossed on hole card games, only to learn that they were nailed due to heat that had nothing to do with the actual play. I’ve had flashing dealers corrected while I was away from the table, which is normally cause to leave immediately, but a keen-eared partner was able to rate the incident as fairly innocuous based on the conversation between the pit and the dealer.

Eavesdropping is not limited to team play, either. If I’ve learned anything in the eavesdropping game, it’s that people have a very poor estimation of audibility. Just as APs have a terrible tendency to talk about a play in hushed yet still fully audible levels at the table (cringe), casino personnel have a tendency to talk openly about players as long as they’re an arm’s length or so away. This especially applies to phone conversations.

One of the most common bits of advice is for APs to keep their eyes open. There’s value to be had in unexpected places, and the alert player stands a better shot at finding it than one with blinders on. But why stop there? Keep your ears open, too, as value also comes from knowing what your opponents know. You’d be surprised at how often they spill the beans when they think no one is listening.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

No, I’m not suggesting you should sit in silence, playing in an expressionless an robotic manner. Good acts are valuable, and cultivating the right table image can pay dividends. Emphasis: good acts; the right table image.

New APs tend to spend a lot of time thinking about their acts, but much of that is time wasted. In fact, a lot of the stuff that gets utilized by new APs under the guise of presenting a carefully calculated image to the casino can actually be a red flag.

How many 20-somethings in suits, dressed to the nines, do you see in casinos betting money? I can almost guarantee you that anyone fitting this description that’s not betting quarters or less is an AP. Bonus points if they’re wearing a suit with slip on sneakers.

Even more of a red flag is the table talk that gets passed off as an act. You want the casino to think you’re a degenerate? Then play like one! Your endless remarks about the “flow of the cards” and other such nonsense only serve as an indicator that you’re an observant player who is paying attention to the game.

Civilians that do this get the pass because their style of play is a clear indicator that they believe what they say. When APs engage in voodoo theories, they’re eventually forced to contradict their premises. They’re setting themselves up to get caught in a lie.

I recently played at a table with a couple of players who were obviously not complete squares. They weren’t APs, but they likely had a small edge on the game they were playing. The decision-maker in this crew absolutely would not shut up, commenting on every turn of the cards and spouting off countless inane theories that he clearly didn’t actually believe.

Not five minutes after carefully “explaining” to his partner that dropping his bet size was a good idea because of the current flow of the cards, this player went on a rant about how gamblers shouldn’t be superstitious. His commentary and inevitable self-contradiction made their play more conspicuous, not less.

The thing is, acting is actually really hard, and most of us aren’t at all good at it. Every time we make a statement that we don’t believe, or give a false answers to a question, we’re increasing the probability of getting caught in a lie. When we wear ridiculous costumes or indulge in over-the-top acts, we’re only fooling the simplest of the simple. There are lots of people out there that can spot a phony, and some of those people also happen to work in casinos.

If the pit boss asks where you’re from and you answer with a city you know nothing about, you’d better hope they—or anyone else at the table—are not familiar with it either. If someone asks what you do for a living and you respond with a job you can’t speak about in great detail or that doesn’t match up with your table image, then you’re asking for trouble. If your act is far removed from your real personality and you’re not an accomplished method actor, then I’d bet you’re fooling people as well as you may think you are.

Instead, I recommend keeping your mouth shut. Talk about stuff that you know and are legitimately interested in. When you feel compelled to toss some nonsense into the conversation, think twice. You’ll get away with it most of the time, but eventually you’ll put yourself in a tough spot, and one that’s almost certainly unnecessary.

In my opinion, the best acts are the ones that are hardly acts at all. That’s not any new insight—I’ve heard and read the same from multiple APs. But it’s absolutely true: if your act is just a slightly different version of your actual self, then you’re far less likely to get caught in a lie.

Casino surveillance folks have an acronym for players and actions that appear a little off—JDLR:just doesn’t look right. Visually, something is out of place, and operators with good JDLR sense will take a little extra time to watch someone if they set it off.

At the tables, the words that come out of your mouth are the actions that set off JDLR alarms.

A fidgety character betting minimum on a table that’s bleeding chips to a big play, while compulsively looking up at the cameras is going to get a closer look from an alert surveillance operator. A kid at the table talking up an implausible career and expounding on various gambling superstitions while playing flawless basic strategy isn’t going to smell right to an alert dealer, or floor person, or pit boss, or civilian eager to poke holes in the story once the player leaves the table for a bathroom break.

Keep it simple, stick with what you know, and unless you’re extremely confident that what you’re saying doesn’t carry the risk of setting off any bullshit detectors, just keep your mouth shut.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

Is it 20/20 vision? A dextrous hand? A mind like a steel trap, lightning-fast counting skills, and an act that could fool even the most jaded pit boss?

Nope. It’s a strong network.

As an AP who is not particularly talented in any specific aspect of advantage play, there’s no question that my lifetime earnings have been heavily influenced by the strength of my network. I think my more naturally-gifted colleagues would tell you the same about themselves. For any AP, a strong network is the best and most reliable source of cold, hard EV.

This isn’t about being a leech; in fact, it’s anything but. If you’re honest, make fair deals, are easy to work with, and do your best to contribute whenever possible, you’ll likely be blessed with a wide network of players willing to share information and work with you. It’s never a one-way street—players who treat it as one will soon find themselves at a dead end.

There are players out there who are very bright and are unquestionably able to beat games on their own but that are giant pains in the ass to work with—or worse, completely dishonest crooks—and so they’re often stuck working alone, or working exclusively with green APs who haven’t caught wind of their reputation yet.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the AP biz is extremely reputation-based. If you give other APs a raw deal, it won’t take long for other APs to find out. Aside from the immediate implications of being a total asshole, you’re also heavily stunting your earning ability.

For the shot-takers, liars, and all-around shady APs who conduct themselves in this manner, I have no particular advice. You’ll be out of business soon, anyway.

But there are a lot of APs who mean well and still find themselves battling a questionable reputation. You don’t want to be one of these guys. Prevention is the best medicine.

One of the biggest gripes I hear about other APs is that they’re difficult or unpleasant to work with. This can range from trying to change deals during a trip due to playing with scared money, to splitting hairs over literal pennies during chops. If you’re sweating a few extra bucks amongst a play worth thousands, rest assured there are a lot of other guys out there who are more easygoing and just as capable as you willing to take your spot.

I don’t mean to suggest that you should be willing to be walked on by other APs, but often, differences of opinion will arise when it comes to splitting expenses and things of that nature. I stay flexible in situations like these, and it’s no coincidence that the people I work with consistently do the same. We’re not out to game each other, and we know that.

That leads to my next point: always make clear deals. I’ve been in situations before where disputes have arisen over non-minor things, like jackpot payouts, missing chips, and chop percentages after a game has already been secured.

In these kind of cases, I’ve generally been willing to give both sides the benefit of the doubt. Given the character of the APs involved, I don’t think anyone was angling dishonestly, but a major dispute still occurred, sometimes requiring mediation by an unbiased third party. In some cases, these disputes have hurt working relationships between impeccably honest APs.

The solution is to cover all the bases before the start of a play, or a trip, or a partnership. Account for as many possibilities as you can. Plan for the unexpected.

What happens if a teammate loses a purple chip while walking to the casino? What happens if a teammate is robbed in the parking garage? What’s the deal if one teammate starts a trip a day early and another starts a day late but stays a day extra? If someone wins a drawing for a new car while playing a session as part of a team, how is that handled?

The answers will vary from player to player, so talk about them before they happen—hopefully the bad ones won’t—and make sure you’re on the same page. The more you plan for, the fewer potential surprises you need to worry about, and the less likely it will be that you’ll have a disagreement that could hurt your working relationship.

Your network with other APs is your strongest asset, and it will usually be more consistent and valuable than any cache of secret games or individual skills you’ll ever develop. Plan ahead, be flexible, don’t be a jerk, and keep building that network with your good name and your easy-to-work-with attitude.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com

Occasionally, you’ll play a session with no scrutiny, no heat, and no suspicion coming from the dealer, the pit, or surveillance. More often, and especially as you engage in higher-stakes play, your presence will be a source of curiosity amongst casino personnel at best, and a serious source of immediate concern at worst.

You are essentially presenting the casino with a puzzle: who you are, and whether or not you’re a desirable player. Do you want your puzzle to be a children’s jumbo jigsaw, or a 2000-piece borderless jigsaw with no box image and extra pieces?

Much has been said about various tactics to keep casino staff guessing. There are lots of things you can do that make you look less like an AP—drinking alcohol, tipping, talking a lot, not paying attention to the cards, and so on. But there are just as many things you can not do that will also add a little bit of complexity to your puzzle.

1. Phones. If there’s one leak that the entire advantage play community has, it’s gratuitous cell phone usage. Don’t get me wrong—cell phones are crucial in this business; they’re one of the most powerful tools we have. But do you really need to be checking your phone under the table every two minutes?

Look at other gamblers in the casino. How many of them are glued to their phones while playing? Not many, because they’re engrossed in the game they’ve decided to play. They’re there to escape reality, not to indulge in by checking their phone compulsively.

It’s even worse if you have a partner at the table doing the same nonstop phone checking under the table. It looks extremely suspicious, and it helps surveillance put you together.

Oh, and holding your phone at an upright angle and/or covering it with your other hand to hide the screen from surveillance cameras looks stupid, and it’s a 100% guarantee that anyone doing this is an AP. Knock it off.

2. Paying attention. Most civilians aren’t attached to their phones while playing because they’re wrapped up in playing! I know it’s boring as a non-civilian to sit at a table all day and play cards, but you need to at least pretend to care about what’s going on.

Sitting in the same spot for eight hours and spending nearly all of that time staring at the TV and checking your phone tells casino staff that you’re not really there to gamble for fun, and you’re not there to satisfy your craving for action, either. So why are you there? Is that a question you want the pit crew and surveillance to ask themselves?

3. Handling cash. Watch gamblers at the table, especially high rollers. If they’re not playing with a credit line (i.e., using markers), how do they handle buy-ins?

Here’s a hint: they definitely don’t sneakily pull a money belt out of their pants and count money by touch under the table. Counting money under the table is an AP thing. Having money neatly separated into set amounts across several pockets is an AP thing. Using a money belt in view of the cameras is a really ridiculous AP thing.

Pulling out a wad of cash in a rubber band is more “normal.” Pulling it out of your wallet is even more so. Be normal.

4. Blatant dealer-play correlation. We’ve all done it, and many of you are doing it now. You like playing against a particular dealer but not so much against their relief. So when the relief shows up, you immediately take a 15-minute long bathroom break. Or, you drop your bet to 1/10 the size of your standard wager.

Is it really worth the savings here? Could you time your breaks a little more strategically—perhaps leaving a little earlier and sometimes not leaving at all? Could you afford to fade the 0.7% house edge on your standard wager size for 20 minutes so that you can keep it steady with a 5% edge for the next hour? Can you employ some game slowing techniques instead of dropping bets to a comically low level or appearing as if you have a serious drug and/or constipation problem?

If you want to look like a civilian, do things that civilians do. And better yet, don’t do things that APs do. By thinking about this from both perspectives, you create a much more difficult puzzle for the casino to solve, and that’s money.

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Blake Phillips is a professional advantage player and contributing editor to AP Street. Contact him at bp@apstreet.com